Enterprise 2.0 Brings Knowledge Management to the Forefront

Knowledge Management tools emerged in the 90s but never got very far, because for the most part, they relied on individuals to fill out forms about what they knew. Even if they were willing to do that, the forms would provide limited information or become outdated very quickly providing little actual utility. Enterprise 2.0 tools like blogs, wikis and micro-blogging, which you may be adding to your Intranet mix, provide a way to capture knowledge much more organically than its 90s counterparts without people even realizing they are participating in knowledge capture.

November 2, 2009

By Ron Miller

Enterprise 2.0 Makes KM Easier
Bill Ives, a consultant who has been working in this space for years, and who writes the Portals and KM blog, says today's tools make it much easier to capture knowledge without nearly as much effort as the older generation of knowledge management tools.

"With Enterprise 2.0 much of knowledge capture happens as a by product of using transparent searchable tools for common workflow and collaboration tasks," he says. "You do not have to go after people to format material for a separate and often siloed repository."

Tracy Smith, Product Manager of Collaboration Solutions with Novell agrees and says these tools enable employees to give and take information in ways that weren't possible in the 90s. "While there needs to be some level of oversight and guidance with Enterprise 2.0 systems, the flexibility of the tool allows for very dynamic usage. Most of the tools from the 90s are file and mapped drive based. Enterprise 2.0 tools should support file sharing, but also allow and enable usage of new information creation and sharing options (like wikis and blogs)," Smith says.

Smith says that file-based system from the 90s don't work in today's worker dispersed world. "Today, organizations are far more dispersed then before. There is not always access to the file system, but browser access is nearly universal. In addition, often information sharing and project collaboration is not only within a single company. Today's tools need to enable internal users as well as include external participants," he says.

How Do You Get At the Data?
It's all well and good to gather this information naturally through Enterprise 2.0 tools, but how do you get at the nugget you absolutely need? For Poul Hebsgaard, a principle at Boston-based consultancy, cBrain, a firm which helps companies implement Enterprise 2.0, it's all about the metadata. He writes in an email, "Give up on user-based classification (Cynical me! It never works!) and automate the process of assigning classification and other meta data based on context (E20 tools MUST be able to do that) -- you (the E20 tool and its web services integration) already know the entity (customer, vendor, employee, location, case, project, business process, deadline/milestone,next step approval/review, etc.) you are working with or you generate it as part of your work, So automate classification and meta data!"

Ives suggests taking advantage of the analytics built into many of today's tools. "Many of the new Enterprise 2.0 collaboration platforms have built in analytics to look at the data they generate such as Telligent, CubeTree, Traction, .Newsgator, and Yakabox. These are also a number of new search related tools that look at the social side of knowledge generated by Enterprise 2.0 tools such as Attivio, iQuest, Darwin, and Recommind," he says.

Implementation Advice
Enterprise 2.0 tools can help increase communication between workers and groups and provide a way to save and access this information over time. Hebsgaard says if you want to be successful implementing this new generation of tools, you need to keep it simple.

"Work on simple, easy-to-adhere-to classification and meta data definition (involve white collar workers -- not just IT and management). Do NOT add too many restrictions -- if you do the tools will simply not be used (restrictions can always be added later.). Help make the way people work easier for them to do ("electrify the process") and they will be more apt to share information instead of hoarding it -- re-engineering can occur along the way," Hebsgaard says.

As you move to integrate Enterprise 2.0 tools into your portals and intranets, keep in mind that you want to be able to capture and use the information in these interactions in the future. Finding and understanding how this information works can help your organization maintain a corporate memory even when workers leave the company, and in today's volatile work place, with companies combining and workers leaving more often, capturing this type of information becomes even more paramount to the success of your organization.